In part 1 and 2 of this 4-part series – “Marketing at the Perfect Time”, we investigated the right and wrong times to send SMS and Email campaigns, effectively pinpointing times that make customers tick, and the times that tick them off.

Don’t worry, if you’ve missed out on part 1 and 2, you can catch them here.

Today, in part 3, we’re going to explore the best and worst times to send social media marketing messages in order to achieve maximum customer engagement.

Climbing the News-feed Ladder

Whether you’re posting, tweeting or pinning, timing is key to any successful social media marketing strategy. If your amazing content isn’t getting as much engagement as you’d hoped, there’s a good chance it’s lost at the bottom of your customers’ news-feed (or else it’s just really crap content, soz).

As different social network users behave differently, it’s important you strategize your marketing campaigns diversely for the best chance to reach your audience. Perfect timing means bridging the gap between getting a 5% and 50% engagement rate, so trial and error should be an ongoing tactic.

To enlighten you on the general do’s and don’ts for social media posting, we’ve created simple time guide infographics for 4 of the most popular social media networks for businesses – LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, with solid statistics courtesy of SurePayroll, Fannit and lorirtaylor.com.

Thankfully, there are loads of great tools out there such as buffer that allow you to schedule automatic posts so don’t just stick to a tight-ship schedule – try, test, measure and repeat!